THE FREEING SPEECH OF PIONEER ERIKA SCHMIDT
BY LINDA MICHAELS
Illustration by Austin Ratner
Erika Schmidt was a woman of many firsts: the first woman, the first social worker, the first child analyst, and the first non-MD to be elected president of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute eighty-one years after its founding. As a self-described “dissident voice within BoPS [APsA’s Board on Professional Standards],” and as a leader of the Association—she became the Executive Committee Lead Director of the APsA board—she also helped inaugurate a new era for psychoanalysis as a whole. She believed in progress for the field and believed that psychoanalysis could in turn bring change to individuals and communities, where she applied psychoanalysis in pursuit of social justice for children. She died unexpectedly in late December 2022 at age seventy-three.
I first met Erika in the Fall of 2013 at what was then called the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. I was starting the adult psychotherapy program, and Erika was starting her presidency of the institute. I felt enthusiasm for Erika’s tenure and hope for the future of the institute and for our field as a whole. Erika and I chatted at the welcome meeting for incoming students; I remember her as friendly yet formal. I knew there must be something special about this woman who had just broken so many barriers and stepped right through the toxic clouds of prejudice and outdated, yet entrenched, traditions. But because she was quiet, polite, and unassuming, I didn’t realize the extent of her power and persistence. I didn’t realize then that she was a revolutionary leader who used her powerful voice on behalf of children.
Well before her election as president, Erika put her commitment to social justice into action. She helped launch, and was the first director of, the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy at the institute. The center focuses on providing mental health services on a sliding scale to underserved communities and educating members of those communities about the emotional life and developmental needs of children and their families. It offers individual psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, developmental guidance for parents, group therapy, consultation, and referrals, all with a central goal of making quality services more accessible to those with limited financial resources. Prior to leading the center, Erika was the clinical director of the Chicago chapter of A Home Within, a national organization that organizes volunteer therapists to provide pro bono psychotherapy to children in foster care. She started her career at the Juvenile Protective Association, first providing social work services to children and families where there was abuse or neglect, and then codirecting their Infant Development Project for high-risk children.
Erika was also instrumental in establishing the Englewood Project, a highly successful and creative community program sponsored by the institute. It provides pro bono group therapy to children (grades K–8) who have been impacted by violence and loss. Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, is often referred to as Chicago’s murder capital. Therapists travel to the schools, meeting with the kids during the school day, in groups as small as four or five kids. They continue to meet weekly for as long as the children want to, and some of the groups have been meeting continuously for years. With their focus on understanding oneself and others, they have been able to transform lives and have earned their name of “Growth Groups” many times over.
In describing the impact of the Growth Groups and the appreciation the teachers, parents, and school administrators came to have for the therapists and their psychoanalytic approach, Erika often shared how surprised the teachers and parents were that the therapists kept showing up. They showed up week after week, year after year, and they showed up for every child in every group. The community was used to White, monied do-gooders suddenly appearing in their communities with offers to help, and then disappearing just as quickly. They saw the transformations in their children, and they came to deeply appreciate the therapists’ dedication, care, persistence, and relationship.
Erika herself lived by these values, and she kept showing up. Throughout her career, she kept showing up for high-risk kids and families, especially the most vulnerable with the least resources. She built successful connections and programs to reach them, and she maintained a focus on the importance of children and the right they have to their inner lives and experiences. Indeed, her ideas on this topic are still being put out into the world: her article “The Rights of Children” was recently included in a book called Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023), edited by Psychotherapy Action Network.
Erika also kept standing up for psychoanalysis and worked to bring its values and therapies to the public. These goals and values informed the massive effort she and others at the institute undertook to transform its curricula and modernize the institution. The name was changed to the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, and formerly segregated programs were brought together, with all incoming students completing a first year of studies together in a new Fundamentals program. After that year, students decide whether to pursue the analytic track or the therapy track. But they come in knowing that they are a part of a larger cohort of psychoanalytic therapists. When I went through the program, the psychotherapy classes met on Tuesdays and the psychoanalysis classes met on Fridays. We were never even in the institute at the same time, and there was no connection or collaboration with other students. With the transformations in the approach, schedule, and curricula, enrollment in the programs has increased appreciably.
I reconnected with Erika and the institute several years after completing the psychotherapy program. Like others, I was lured back by Jonathan Lear offering a class on Freud. I stayed on for the next year in Erika’s Freud class, in which we pursued a close and detailed reading of his texts. The depth and breadth of her knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature was impressive. She had a mastery of the history of the field, and particularly women analysts. And I was so impressed by the changes at the institute, and the ways in which it was reconceptualizing its mission and its relationship with students and the broader community. The institute was also embracing students from all over the world—Australia, Iran, China—and investing in the necessary technology to do so well before the pandemic.
I also became more aware of how threatening these changes were to some of the “old guard.” While I can appreciate the anxieties some analysts experienced due to Erika’s changes, I could not believe the extent of the resistance and vitriol, hidden and blatant, they directed at Erika. Yes, Erika was direct, clear, decisive. This may have been mistaken for harshness, but as a friend said at an informal gathering after her death, Erika was without guile. She offered her best, most considered advice and made informed, balanced decisions that aligned with her personal and professional values and principles. Part of me was scared of her at times, but mainly because she was strong, opinionated. I always knew, without question, that I’d get an honest answer that I could trust. And that I could ask for her help with any problem, at any time. I knew she would show up for me.
Erika’s generosity of time and spirit, her empathy, and her courage to do what’s right and what she believed in, even if that meant breaking boundaries or traditions, were all special aspects of her. Her dedication to helping kids and families and to advocating for psychoanalysis led to another connection I shared with Erika through the Psychotherapy Action Network. She met with us early on, when we were still trying to figure out how to build this advocacy organization and explain it and our big dreams. I’m sure our passion came through, but I don’t know about our clarity of vision. Yet Erika could see the potential, and she decided the institute would sign on as one of the first organizational members. We also asked her to join our Children’s Committee, and after a thoughtful pause, she agreed. She helped us prepare for our 2019 conference in San Francisco, introduced us to whoever she thought could help, and presented there as well. At the start of the pandemic, she realized that therapists in training would need special support and developed a series of webinars to assist them with the transition to online therapy.
Throughout the six years of PsiAN’s life, Erika’s presence has been pivotal and valuable. Our work and friendship deepened over the last several years in particular, during which we met for two hours a week, every Friday. Two years ago, she joined our interim board, while still working as president of the institute, teaching, and maintaining a small private practice. This small group focused on defining the structure and resources we’d need to expand and solidify the organization for the future. In 2022, we launched our board of directors and Erika was elected vice chair. She led our Development Committee and our first coordinated, organized, and systematic effort to fundraise toward our mission. She set an ambitious goal, which made me anxious. But she led an incredibly successful campaign, which not only met that goal, but exceeded it by 70 percent.
When Erika retired from the institute in September 2022, she had planned to devote her professional energies to PsiAN, while continuing her leadership role on APsA’s Executive Committee. Perhaps PsiAN’s focus on therapies of depth, insight, and relationship had a unique resonance with Erika, because they also exemplified how she lived her life. She created, nurtured, and deepened multiple friendships, many of which spanned three or four decades. In a gathering we had in early January, her friends spoke about her in loving and moving ways, and the depth, beauty, and complexity of her relationships were clear. Many said she was an open and deep listener—trustworthy, loving, and devoted. She was the person you wanted to talk to when you were struggling and in need of guidance. You knew she would take you seriously, and that she would, in fact, help you. Even while being a private person, she opened herself up and shared of herself deeply. She had both a profound intelligence and a wicked sense of humor. She liked being in charge, and she was also playful—whether playing Scrabble, Super Scrabble, mah-jongg, Wordle, or more. I don’t think I ever saw her without a New York Times newspaper in her bag (paper copy, of course).
Her quiet ways and idiosyncrasies made her a most unassuming revolutionary. She was one for breaking boundaries, reaching across chasms defined by sexism, racism, and classism, and helping those who needed help the most. We had several conversations about the revolutionary act that is psychoanalysis and how free speech can be not only a tool and a practice from Freud, but also a verb—to free speech—to free our speech and our thinking, to create the power to free and alter a life. Perhaps this is why, as devoted as she was to studying therapeutic action, she prized action. She wanted to do things, make things, help change people’s lives. She loved this aspect of PsiAN, that “action” was not only in our name but driving everything we do. Her commitment to action touched all of the organizations, capacities, and structures she built in her career, and all of the children and families in whose lives she made real, tangible differences. She has had enduring impact for at-risk children and families, under-resourced communities, the institute community, the field of psychoanalysis, and depth therapy.
The informal gathering gave us a chance to be together, to talk, laugh, cry, and remember Erika. This group also organized a weekend of Reading for Erika, with each of us signing up to read, alone, uninterrupted, for one hour in honor of Erika. This gesture was lovely—genuine, deep, quiet, and powerful, not flashy. Personal and profound, quiet and connecting, suffused with poignancy, and rich with meaning—just like Erika.
We will continue to remember her, embrace her values and carry on her projects, reach out to her children. The mourning will take a very long time. But from knowing Erika, and seeing all that she shared with the world, one thing is clear to me: her impact will outlive us all. ■
Linda Michaels, PsyD, MBA, is the chair and cofounder of Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), a consulting editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and a fellow of the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. She is a psychologist with a private practice in Chicago.
Published in issue 57.3, Fall/Winter 2023